Reflections on statistics as a catalyst for engineering and scientific discoveries

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

JMP Discovery 2010

Last week I attended the JMP Discovery 2010 conference. What a great way to learn about the new features coming up in version 9, to network, to see old friends and make new ones, and to enjoy the many keynote speakers like Dan Ariely who talked about how predictably irrational we are. I also had the opportunity to lead a breakout session on Tailor-Made Split-Plot Designs, a short tutorial on JMP® Custom Design.

John Sall, co-founder and Executive Vice President of SAS, gave a one-hour demo showcasing some of the new features of JMP 9. Windows users will discover a new look, while excel users can now leverage the profiler to optimize and simulate worksheet formulas. R users will be able to run R code from within JMP, and data miners will find a new array of tools. From the engineering and science side there are many enhancements to existing tools, as well as some new ones. Here are some of the new things:

Fit Y by X platform. Analysis of Means (ANOM) has been added when the X variable is categorical. ANOM is a graphical way for comparing means to the overall mean. Think of it as a control chart with decision limits.

Sample Size calculator. A Reliability Test Plan is now available to design reliability studies. There is also a Reliability Demonstration calculator for planning a reliability demonstration study.

Life Distribution. Several new distributions have been added including a 3-parameter Weibull distribution.

Degradation. A new tool for performing degradation analyses within the Analyze>Reliability and Survival platform.

Accelerated Life Test Design. Within the DOE platform to design ALT plans for one and two accelerating factors.

Graph Builder. Several new additions including the ability to use custom maps.

I am looking forward to sharing with you examples of how to use these new tools. The schedule date for the release of JMP 9 is October 12. Stay tuned.

Brenda & José

We are industrial statisticians each with more than fifteen years of experience working closely with engineers and scientists to help them “make sense of data”. We view statistics, combined with a powerful visualization software, as a catalyst for discoveries and insights that help bring new products to market, sustain manufacturing operations, and guide process improvements. We are avid users of JMP and SAS.